buffet table ideas

by a professional party planner

on this page:

  • Why you shouldn’t do a traditional buffet
  • How to make your party food look like it was professionally-catered
  • Why you don’t need fancy recipes or extensive menus to wow your guests
  • Why you should put the effort into the presentation not the menu
  • Styling and presentation tricks to make everyday dishes feel more special
  • The best split of hot v cold food to make it easier on yourself

i’m matt james

professional event producer

  • 29 years event-planning experience
  • Winner of 30 industry awards
  • Clients include:
  • Elton John,
  • Stella McCartney,
  • Sarah Jessica Parker,
  • Kevin Spacey……and more

welcome

Matt James professional event planner
OPEN BIO
CONTENTS

ON THIS PAGE

01 hot food stations

Why you need DIY food stations where guests can customize and assemble the food themselves.

Hors d'oeuvres and appetizers arranged in rows on a modern buffet table / food station
Build your own burger buffet station with buns and toppings
Soup buffet station with slow cookers and toppings for a party
Chili bar with slow cookers and topping bowls including cheese, beans, and lime wedges
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02 cold food stations

How to use styling and presentation to make simple party food feel more special

Individual charcuterie cups with meat and cheese for a party buffet
Tomato and burrata appetizer bites in coupe glasses with balsamic caviar pearls, served with spoons
Traditional pagoda-print takeout boxes filled with lo mein noodles, chopsticks, and yellow chrysanthemums on a copper tray
Shrimp and avocado salad mason jars topped with a crostini garnish and silver forks on a wine barrel
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03 Dessert table food

Why you need a mix of popular, unusual, eye-catching, & personalized dessert table treats

personalized Polaroid style custom photo cookies of a man 'through the years' for his 60th birthday
fruit salad served in clear disposable mini dessert cups
pink and white cakesicles with gold butterfly decoration
desserts served in shooter glasses and mini dessert cups arranged in rows on a party dessert table
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in this section

advice from a pro

  • Want your party food to wow guests, look like it was styled by a professional, and still send everyone home well fed,
  • But you don’t have the budget to bring in caterers?
  • Well, I’ll let you in on a secret…
  • You don’t need fancy recipes, extensive menus, or the chef skills of Gordon Ramsay to do any of that.
  • With a few simple styling and presentation tricks you can make everyday dishes — like pasta, salad, noodles, mac and cheese, and even mashed potato — feel like a special occasion, not a Tuesday-night dinner.
  • Feeding a crowd yourself is genuinely one of the most stressful parts of throwing a party,
  • So instead of slaving over complicated food, put the effort into the presentation, not the menu.
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MATT’S TIPs

Matt James professional event planner
advice from a pro

why you shouldn’t do a traditional buffet

  • Old-fashioned: Serving trays and bowls piled high with food make buffets feel dated and bring to mind all-you-can-eat chain restaurants.
  • Quantities / Waste: With a traditional buffet, you need to prepare huge amounts of food because guests take way more than they’ll actually eat, and so much of it goes to waste.
  • Mess: It looks great for the first five minutes. Then guests start dropping food and putting the wrong spoon back in the wrong dish, and it turns messy and unhygienic fast.
  • Atmosphere: Guests load up a plate then shuffle off to a table to demolish it. When everyone starts sitting down, the energy in the room drops, and the atmosphere with it.
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serving platters and plates of food laid out on a traditional party buffet table

advice from a pro

why you need food stations

Food Stations fall into two different categories:

01 HOT DIY FOOD STATIONS

To make things easier for yourself, I recommend aiming for approx. 20% hot food and 80% cold food.

For the 20% hot food, set up a DIY food station where guests can customize and assemble the food themselves. This could be a hot dog, burger, mac & cheese, baked potato, taco, burrito, or mashed potato bar with a selection of toppings.

Benefits include:

  • Time Saving
  • Batch-cooking the key ingredient and a selection of toppings reduces the amount of work the host has to do at the party.
  • Easy
  • An easy way to serve large quantities of hot food by presenting it in crock pots and chafing dishes.
  • Simple
  • Allows you to serve crowd-pleasing, easy to make, everyday foods but with a fun creative twist.
  • Elevated
  • Can be enhanced with styling & presentation; e.g. mac & cheese / mashed potato served in martini glasses or personalized takeout burger boxes (see ideas later on this page).
  • Interactive
  • Letting guests customize their food with different toppings creates an experience that gets people involved and breaks the ice.

Check out the post below for more info and ideas.

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the idea

food stations

Take the pressure off feeding a crowd by setting up a self-serve hot food station where guests can customize and assemble the food themselves.

read more
Hors d’oeuvres and appetizers arranged in rows on a modern buffet table / food station

02 COLD SMALL PLATES STATIONS

For the 80% cold food, you can make simple party food — such as chicken skewers, pasta, or salads — look more special just by serving items as individual ‘grab & go’ portions using tasting plates, appetizer cups, tasting spoons / forks, mason jars, and takeout boxes.

Benefits include:

  • Visual impact
  • Individual portions lend a stylish, modern, and professionally-catered look to your spread.
  • Reinvented
  • Makes simple, home-made, or store-bought foods look and feel more special.
  • Less congestion
  • Pre-portioned individual servings mean guests can grab one quickly instead of queueing at the buffet while the person in front slowly loads up their plate.
  • Mobility
  • Guests can eat standing up, while chatting and mingling, rather than needing to sit down to eat.
  • Quantities
  • Easier to visualize quantities needed per person when planning and budgeting.
  • Portion control
  • Easier to regulate portion size and reduce over-consumption of expensive items.
  • Batch cooking
  • Dishes can be made in big batches in advance then portioned at the last minute.
  • Work-load
  • Friends and family can contribute dishes which can then be divided into appetizer cups, takeout boxes, mason jars, or martini glasses to make them look more stylish.
  • Less waste
  • Guests tend to take one portion instead of loading up their plate so there’s far less waste.
  • Less mess
  • Individual portions mean no messy spills, half-empty serving bowls, or double-dipped spoons to ruin the display.
  • Clear up
  • High-quality disposables can be recycled or thrown away after the event to reduce clearing and cleaning time.
  • Atmosphere
  • People pick and try a few things, then go back to mingling, so it helps keep the party atmosphere going.
  • Trade-off
  • While pre-portioned food stations take a little more thought and setup, the benefits of being able to make simple foods, such as salads, pasta, noodles, pies and tarts, fit for a special occasion make the extra planning way more preferable to spending hours in the kitchen slaving over complicated recipes.
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the idea

appetiser cups

Elevate simple homemade salads, charcuterie, shrimp cocktail, or veggies & dip and give them a professionally-catered look by serving in these individual appetizer cups.

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Elote-style corn appetizer cups topped with cotija cheese, chili powder, and lime
the idea

stemware

Elevate simple food, add height to your display, and allow guests to eat while mingling by serving dishes in elegant disposable stemware.

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Stemware title image with shrimp and avocado ceviche in a chili-salt-rimmed glass, garnished with lime and mini forks
the idea

takeout boxes

Allow guests to eat more substantial portions standing up while chatting and mingling by serving noodles, pasta, or salads in individual Chinese-style takeout boxes.

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Takeout boxes filled with noodles and chopsticks, featured image for the Takeout Boxes party idea
the idea

charcuterie cups

Ease congestion at the buffet and allow guests to snack while mingling by serving individual ‘grab & go’ charcuterie portions in these customized cups.

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individual portion charcuterie cups
the idea

tasting forks

Make small bites feel more special or control the portion size for more expensive ingredients by presenting them upright on individual tasting forks.

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Blue cheese and prosciutto-wrapped cheese bites on tasting forks, featured image for the Tasting Forks party idea
the idea

mason jars

Keep the party’s energy up by allowing guests to eat and mingle with more substantial ‘grab and go’ portions served in mason jars.

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Pasta salad mason jars with custom labels, featured image for the Mason Jars party food idea
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Matt James professional event planner
the idea

custom fast food boxes

Allow guests to eat more substantial portions standing up while chatting and mingling by serving foods in custom fast food boxes branded with your party’s name.

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Custom "Noah’s Cabana Club" striped fast food boxes on a party table
the idea

tasting plates

Make simple snacks, like quiche, tartlets, sliced wraps, or mac & cheese bites, look more stylish by serving on disposable mini tasting plates.

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Assorted tasting plates with pea purée, mushroom, and fig toppers garnished with edible flowers

the idea

shooters

Give simple snacks like chicken skewers, shrimp cocktail, pasta, and veggies a stylish makeover by serving them in individual disposable shooter glasses.

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Tomato soup shooters with a grilled cheese garnish, featured image for the Disposable Shooters party idea
the idea

tasting spoons

Make small bites more special or control portion size for more expensive ones by serving on individual disposable tasting spoons.

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Caprese bites with tomato, mozzarella, and pesto on white tasting spoons, featured image for the Tasting Spoons party idea
the idea

pipettes

Give simple buffet bites that professionally-catered look with a squeeze of sauce, gravy, or dressing from a disposable food pipette.

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Golden fried croquette bites with green sauce pipettes, featured image for the Food Pipettes party idea
the idea

fillable letters and numbers

Turn smaller treats into a larger display by spelling out names, ages, words, or phrases with these fillable letter and number boxes / trays

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Fillable letters filled with charcuterie, cheese, and fruit for a party
the idea

grazing tables

Skip the full buffet at your next drinks party and still wow guests by building a grazing table using a template that takes the guesswork out of layout and proportions.

read more
Grazing table with meats, cheeses, fruit, and crackers for a party
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03 dessert table food ideas

Hit the ‘Read More’ button below to check out my dessert table food ideas page.

personalized custom caricature cookie of a young man in a graduation cap and gown for a graduation party
custom photo personalized Happy Birthday m&m's
pink and white decorated mini donuts
snowman themed cakesicles
read more

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